A peer-reviewed electronic journal published by the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies ISSN 1541-0099 Vol. 14 - August 2005 Gnosis in Cyberspace? Body, Mind and Progress in Posthumanism Oliver Krueger Department of Religion, University of Heidlberg Abstract Religion and transhumanism are often regarded as competing or even opposing worldviews. European media philosophers tend to identify common elements in both systems which depend on the metaphysical reception of ideas related to the body and cyberspace. The posthuman aim of a virtual and immortal existence inside the storage of a computer seems to be a continuation or a revivification of the ancient Gnostic philosophy. By focusing on the physical aspects of posthumanist utopias, the article shows that posthumanism can hardly be interpreted as Gnosis but rather as a mere utilitarian philosophy. 1. The Body in Cyberspace Religion and transhumanism are often regarded as competing or even opposing worldviews. European media philosophers tend to identify common elements in both systems which depend on the metaphysical reception of ideas related to the body and cyberspace. The posthuman aim of a virtual and immortal existence inside the storage of a computer seems to be a continuation or a revivification of the ancient Gnostic philosophy. But apparently, we have forgotten our bodies. It might be one of the most palpable peculiarities of post-modern philosophy to assess the disappearance of the body and the end of bodily senses. Jean Baudrillard (1994), Dietmar Kamper and Christof Wulf (1984), and many others have done a lot of remarkable observations and analysis on the development of our bodies in the age of medial[?] reproduction. The diffused reality of the body is mooted. As the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek noted, “we live in a society with coffee without caffeine, with chocolate without sugar and with virtuality as reality without reality” Žižek & Negt 2001). When Florian Roetzer edited the two volumes of the Art Forum International in 1996 on the future of the body, the utopias of the posthuman body were discussed by a wide range of art and media theorists and philosophers. Their different contributions centered potential and utopian transformations of the body in the context of genetic engineering and prosthesis technology (Deitch 1996; Roetzer 1996; Steels 1996; Stelarc 1996). In a most extreme example, the American robotics researcher Hans Moravec presented his vision of an absolute virtual, human existence as the end goal of evolution. The human personality – the human “mind” – should be scanned as a perfect simulation and should continue to exist thenceforward as an immortal being inside the storage of a computer (Moravec 1996). Journal of Evolution and Technology 14(2) August 2005 77 OLIVER KRUEGER By this small article in the Art Forum International, Moravec became the most prominent reference point for many European philosophers and cultural theorists who dealt with posthumanism. Unfortunately, most of theses publications only mentioned Moravec’s name but did not take into account his concepts (Boehme 1996; Hayles 1999:35; Zons 2001:16). The release of the human personality from its “carnal corporation,” as Moravec had described it, was identified as a gnostic or even platonic motif in the post-modern cultural debate – cybergnosis and cyberplatonism became a saw (List 1996). Its prophets such as Marvin Minsky or Hans Moravec are Gnostics, because they intend to overcome the world of matter and corporality, in order to create a “pure” sphere of mind ... The scrap heap earth and the grub sack of the human body are the sacrifice, which can be performed light-heartedly … since earth and body are stamped by perdition. (Boehme 1996:259)1 But do we have to interpret every utopia of a separation between the human body and mind as a kind of Gnosis? Is it correct to characterize the posthuman utopias of a disembodied existence in cyberspace as Gnosis or as a new variety of Platonism? Here, we will discuss these questions. Hence, it is necessary to introduce some further differentiations in the extensive discourse of medial[?] utopias of bodies. At the same time we have to become epistemologically aware of our well beloved gnostic or platonic glasses, with which we prefer to perceive every kind of overcoming the human body. Since at this point the explicit bodily utopias of posthumanism shall be analyzed we first have to determine the very center of posthumanist thought in comparison with transhumanism. Afterwards the gnostic interpretation of posthumanism will be outlined and compared in different aspects with the philosophical concepts of Gnosis. 2. Posthumanism and Transhumanism After Thomas Blount had defined the word posthuman in his Glossographia (1656) as something in the future (“following or to come, that shall be”), the American culture theorist Ihab Hassan (1977) was to my knowledge the first who used the term posthumanist for the philosophical ideas of overcoming the human race as well as humanism (Blount 1656; Hassan 1977; Simpson & Weiner 1989:197; Krueger 2004:107-112). In his novel Schismatrix, the science fiction author Bruce Sterling (1979) signifies a future species as post-human that is demerged in the two sub-species of Shapers and Mechanics. After the robotic researcher Hans Moravec had proclaimed the vision of a post-biological and supernatural future of humankind in his constitutional work Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence (1988), the term “post-biological” was increasingly replaced by the notion of “posthuman” in succeeding publications of the 1990s (Dery 1996:371; Hayles 1999:343; Regis 1990:7, 144). But what is posthumanism? In the scientific literature there is a variety of inconsistent definitions, which mostly identify posthumanism with transhumanism. Katherine Hayles for example characterizes posthumanism by the fundamental philosophical assumption that human beings are determined by their pattern of information and not by their devaluated prosthesis-body, so that human beings can be understood as a kind of machine (Hayles 1999:2 et seq.). Jens Schroeter defines posthumanism completely differently as a conglomerate of technological visions of human transformation from genetic engineering to diverse cyborg utopias (Schroeter 2002:84 et seq.; Richard 2000:72). Leading thinkers of the pragmatic transhumanism underline some other aspects defining the term posthuman: 1 All German quotations are translated into English by O. Krueger. 78 Journal of Evolution and Technology 14(2) August 2005 GNOSIS IN CYBERSPACE A posthuman is a human descendant who has been augmented to such a degree as to be no longer a human. Many transhumanists want to become posthuman. As a posthuman, your mental and physical abilities would far surpass those of any unaugmented human. You would be smarter than any human genius and be able to remember things much more easily ... Posthumans could be completely synthetic (based on artificial intelligence) or they could be the result of making many partial augmentations of a biological human or a transhuman. Some posthumans may even find it advantageous to get rid of their bodies and live as information patterns on large super-fast computer networks.2 Referring to our basic question of Gnosis and posthumanism it seems to be all the more appropriate to clarify the difference between posthumanism and transhumanism.3 Although these two terms are used interchangeable in some common discourses we can identify two diverse groups of texts within the transhuman and posthuman discourse. Mainly there are two circumstances that require a differentiation: first, transhumanism and posthumanism have different origins and second, their goals and the structure of their arguments differ. The beginning of transhumanism in the 1970s can be localized particularly in California, dominated by the visions of the futurist Fereidoun M. Esfandiary (FM2030), the commitment of the psychedelic movement’s mastermind Timothy Leary and the ideas of cryonics as Robert Ettinger has worked them out. Above all they focus the enhancement of human beings’ mental and physical powers by technology or psychoactive substances (Esfandiary 1973; Ettinger 1972; Leary & Sirius 1997). In contrast to these transhumanist thinkers, the physicist Frank Tipler, the AI researcher Marvin Minsky, the robotic researcher Hans Moravec and the IT entrepreneur Raymond Kurzweil, which in my view belong to posthumanism, center themselves among cybernetic visions of the simulation of human beings – in no way do they refer to the early transhumanists such as Esfandiary, Leary and Ettinger. The immortal existence in virtuality is the human aim for such posthumanist thinkers, and such a goal will be achieved by the end of 21st century even according to their most pessimistic estimations. Transhumanists devote themselves to more pragmatic questions of life extension and mind enhancement technologies, such as life-prolonging diets, smart drugs and prosthesis technology or even the prospects of cryonics while these applications are almost never mentioned in posthumanist writings. Although the edge is fuzzy, one could point out that posthumanism shapes the aim and transhumanism expresses the way to overcome the present biological human being. The disregard for the present and practical matters in posthumanism reflects the distinctive differences with respect to transhumanism. While in transhumanism human beings and their descendants are the subject of evolution,